CROWLEY, Aleister.

£6,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Why Jesus Wept. First edition, presentation copy, enigmatically inscribed by the author to Clive Bell on the first blank, "W.J.W. startles the Belle (touches the clitoris as they say at the White Cat) This, then, to startle you. A.C.". Loosely inserted is a note in Crowley's hand, giving the address, "M. H. Bell Htl de la Haute Loire Bd. Raspail".Crowley and Bell both moved in the same circles in turn-of-the-century Paris. Bell arrived there in 1904 with a letter of introduction from Gerald Kelly, who was soon to be Crowley's brother-in-law. They both frequented Le Chat Blanc in Montparnasse, and as patrons of the restaurant they are satirized in Somerset Maugham's The Magician (1908). Crowley recalled his evenings in the Chat Blanc in Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden (1904): "There also did he meet the well-known ethicist, I-, fair as a boy, with boy's gold locks curling about his Grecian head; I-, the pure and subtle-minded student, whose lively humour and sparkling sarcasm were as froth upon the deep and terrible waters of his polished irony. It was a pity that he drank" (quoted in Confessions, pp. 346). At the time, Crowley disguised all his acquaintances in his writing with letters of the alphabet, but a note in his posthumously published "autohagiography" identifies the man labelled 'I' as Heward Bell; Heward was one of Bell's middle names (Confessions, p. 348). Bell himself recalled dining with Crowley at the Paillard, "at that time one of the most fashionable and expe

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